


before the storm

by ChronicTonsillitis



Series: Prompt Fills [6]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Background Relationships, Bellamy "Two Brain Cells" Blake, F/M, Fix-It of Sorts, Getting Together, Jealousy, Pining, Smut, The 100 (TV) Season 1, canonical idiocy, who are we kidding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-17
Updated: 2021-02-01
Packaged: 2021-03-15 00:48:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 18,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28804581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChronicTonsillitis/pseuds/ChronicTonsillitis
Summary: “Did that help?” he asks, knowing it didn’t.Raven stands, tugging her pants up over her hips and stepping into her shoes. “No,” she says flatly. She grabs her jacket and hesitates by the tent flap, not looking back. “You?”Bellamy lets out a breath through his teeth, settling back on his pillow. His mind flashes to blonde hair and blue eyes and pink lips wrapped around a cock that is not his own— his fist clenches, nails digging into his palm.“No.”****a rewrite of "the calm" s1ep11+ storyline but with the bellarke subtext....unsubtle
Relationships: Bellamy Blake/Clarke Griffin
Series: Prompt Fills [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2141463
Comments: 81
Kudos: 424
Collections: The t100 Writers for BLM Initiative





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for The t100 Writers for BLM Initiative based on this prompt: "rewrite that s1 scene where Clarke is missing and bellamy thinks she’s off boning Finn and gets really snippy for Some Weird Reason and then gets Very Guilty bc she‘s actually kidnapped"

Bellamy is not angry.

Why should he be, anyway? What does it matter to him if Clarke goes with that floppy haired loser to hunt? It’s not like they’ll be spending the time fucking, what with Raven and everything. Truly, the only reason he’s bothered is that Finn is a terrible shot, and the camp needs Clarke.

He needs Clarke.

But not in any way other than the standard co-leader way. No, Bellamy just would prefer not to be in charge of nearly a hundred kids by himself. He’s not a babysitter.

And yeah, Clarke’s technically a kid, same as the rest of them, but she’s—she’s different. Holds herself like an adult. Which means that he doesn’t have to be the only adult. Well, him and Raven actually, but Raven doesn’t have the temperament to be a leader. She’s too standoffish, too busy mooning over her ex-boyfriend; not to mention she’s—

Currently shoving rations into her pack like she’s planning on making a run for it.

Bellamy groans, stalking over to her and catching her arm. Raven shakes it off, turning to glare at him. “What?”

Bellamy gives the bag in her hands a significant look. “Going somewhere?”

Raven’s lips tighten, her expression hard. “Anywhere but here.”

_Oh, for the love of_ — Bellamy grabs her arm again as she tries to stalk past him. “You’re gonna get yourself killed out there alone, and it’s not gonna be the revenge you think it will be.”

“What would you know?” Raven sneers.

He resists the urge to roll his eyes. “I know that if you leave you’re going to die, and then we’re all going to die, because nobody else knows how to make weapons.”

Raven deflates slightly, her shoulders sinking. “So what?” she asks. “I’m just supposed to stay here and watch?”

Bellamy stiffens. His spine draws up straight, arms crossing over his chest protectively. Does she mean—? No, Raven can’t know anything he doesn’t know, and Clarke wouldn’t just— Finn and Raven _just_ broke up, she wouldn’t—

Not that it matters to him, anyways. Clarke and Finn can fuck all they want, so long as they’re not endangering the camp. Which they aren’t, because they’re just out hunting. Just like everybody else.

“No,” Bellamy corrects, raising one eyebrow. “You’re supposed to stay here and be useful.”

She sighs and drops the bag to the floor, defeated. “So what’s the plan then? Just going to sit behind these walls with your gun and pick grounders off one-by-one?”

He almost wants to laugh, because, yeah, they’re fucked. They’re miserably fucked, and he knows that just as well as anyone else. More than anyone else, even, giving that he and Clarke have made a concerted effort to conceal that fact. He’s not a leader, or a general. Hell, he didn’t even make it to full guard member. He’s just the idiot who shot the chancellor so he could follow his sister to the ground. 

“Pretty much,” he admits bitterly. “Got any better ideas?”

Raven’s eyes light up, and he can see her mind start to whir, gears turning. It’s funny, the expression she’s making, because it’s so familiar, so like— _Clarke_.

Clarke, their best strategist, their only healer, his _partner_ ; who is currently in the woods under the watchful protection of some guy Bellamy knows viscerally is currently doing nothing but making moon eyes at the blonde instead of looking out for Grounders.

Bellamy lets out a heavy sigh.

Yeah, they’re so fucked.

****

When she doesn’t come back with the rest of the hunters, Bellamy is, in fact, a little bit angry.

Who could blame him? It’s irresponsible, Clarke knows that. They’re all supposed to be back by dark, co-leaders or not. Actually, co-leaders _especially_. Clarke helped come up with the rules, the least she can do is follow them.

“Finn still gone too?” he asks Monty tightly.

Monty nods, shifting anxiously as he looks to Bellamy for guidance. “Nobody’s seen them since noon. Do you think we should go look—”

Bellamy lets out a harsh snort. “No.”

The idea of the Princess and Spacewalker, the most uptight person in camp and the most— _adequate_ tracker getting lost together is ludicrous. No, this is no accident at all. He remembers the last time they disappeared together, before Raven came down, and nearly grimaces.

Monty worries his lip. “But—”

“They’ll be fine,” Bellamy grits out.“Tell Clarke to come see me when she gets back.”

He turns and stalks away before anyone can ask him one more thing about Clarke’s _mysterious_ absence; brushing past a wide-eyed Raven, standing stock still a few feet away. 

Great. At least he doesn’t have to be the one to break the news.

He pushes into his tent, tossing his jacket down beside his bed with more force than entirely necessary. Bellamy groans at the sound of canvas brushing open behind him, turning to face the intruder. 

“Look, I’m really not in the— Oh.” He expects to see one of the camp girls he’d been sleeping with, Bree or one of the other blondes whose names he hadn’t quite learned yet when he started to clean up his act. Instead he finds Raven. “What are you doing in here?”

“Finn and Clarke, huh?” Raven sidles closer, running her fingers over the papers on his desk. Bellamy watches suspiciously as she glances up at him. Her lips quirk into a smirk devoid of any and all humor. “They don't waste time, I'll give them that. What's it been, a day and a half?”

He can feel all of his muscles tense, because, yeah, sure he’s been thinking it, but it’s a whole different story to have it confirmed by someone else. Finn and Clarke. Clarke and Finn. 

Ugh.

Bellamy’s jaw flexes. “You mistake me for someone who cares.”

And he doesn’t care. He doesn’t.

He _doesn’t_.

But Raven does, of course. It’s her shitty ex-boyfriend out there, fucking the pretty blonde princess again, just like he was before Raven come to the ground. _Just like_ — Bellamy crosses his arms over his chest, sneering. “Time to move on.”

Raven’s eyes flit over his face, his posture, and her expression loosens. Bellamy’s not sure what she thinks she sees, but it can’t be good. “Interesting.”

“Shut up,” he says, his voice low. 

Raven’s lips curl, something mean glittering in her eyes. “I’m not saying anything.” 

Bellamy glares at her.

“You know, I think there’s something that would make us both feel better,” Raven muses. "I've only ever been with Finn." She steps closer, fingers running up his torso, tracing his abs through his shirt. Bellamy swallows, his throat suddenly dry. “Take off your clothes.”

He just stands there, lips pressed tightly together.

Raven makes a small noise of annoyance, a huff. “Fine,” she says, toeing off her shoes. “I'll go first.”

“What are you doing?” he asks, watching as Raven unbuckles her belt, dropping it on the ground beside her.

She grins at him, unbuttoning her pants and stepping out of them, revealing her bare legs. “Moving on.”

And why shouldn’t he fuck Raven? She wants him to, and besides, she’s hot. 

Bellamy feels heat grow in the pit of his stomach. It’s not just attraction, and he knows that, however much he wishes it were. It’s also spite, the sick hope that Raven’s attempt to hurt Finn will end up hurting Clarke too.

Which is stupid, he thinks bitterly, because why would Clarke care? 

_But what if she does?_ , something whispers traitorously inside him. _Wouldn’t you like to see it?_ His throat ticks, hands settling heavy on Raven’s hips.

Bellamy would.

“If you're looking for someone to talk you down, tell you that you're just upset and not thinking straight—” He takes a breath, giving her a look. “I'm not that guy.”

Raven steps in close, her fingers finding his belt buckle. She looks up, meeting his eyes. “Good.”

****

For what it’s worth, the sex is good.

Despite only ever fucking Spacewalker, Raven clearly knows what she’s doing. And she’s beautiful, of course, with her long brown hair and her big doe eyes. It’s just— It’s not right.

It’s not right for the same reason it wasn’t right with Bree, or any of the other girls he’s tried to fuck since the trip to the bunker. She’s just too tall, her body too lithe, her hair too straight and eyes too brown and upper lip too free of birthmarks. She’s just—

Not Clarke. 

Which is good, he tries to tell himself. It’s the whole point. But— the anger can only take him so far.

He’s not even sure _Raven’s_ into it, her expression more determined than anything, but he does his best anyway, getting her off twice while he fucks her. Normally Bellamy runs his mouth in the bedroom, but the mood isn’t there for that. The tent is filled with heavy breathing, with gasps and groans, but no words. Raven’s kisses are harsh, all tongue and teeth, and he’s glad for it. 

When he finishes, it’s with his eyes closed, imagining gold curls spread out over his pillow like a halo, wide blue eyes and heavy tits. 

He slides off Raven as he comes down, panting. They both lie there for a long moment in the damp sheets, silently staring up at the ceiling of the tent. It’s not regret he can feel rolling off her, but something else. Hollowness. Bellamy can feel it echoed back in his own chest.

Raven moves to the edge of the bed, stiffly pulling her shirt over her head. Bellamy sits up as well, watching the line of her shoulders with sad eyes.

“Did it help?” he asks, knowing it didn’t.

Raven stands, tugging her pants up over her hips and stepping into her shoes. “No,” she says flatly. She grabs her jacket and hesitates by the door flap, not looking back. “You?”

Bellamy lets out a breath through his teeth, settling back on his pillow. His mind flashes to blonde hair and blue eyes and pink lips wrapped around a cock that is not his own— his fist clenches, nails digging into his palm.

“No,” he admits.

Raven jerks her chin in a terse nod, and leaves.

****

He doesn’t fall asleep right away.

The longer he lies there awake, the longer he waits for Clarke to come back from god knows where with her hair in knots, smelling like sex; the angrier he gets. When Monty knocks uselessly at the flap of his tent, quietly calling his name, Bellamy snaps. “ _What?_ ”

“Um, sorry to wake you up, it’s just—” He looks to the tent, seeing Monty’s shadow shifting his weight awkwardly from foot to foot. “Clarke still isn’t back.”

Bellamy rolls his eyes, hissing through his teeth. “And Finn?”

Monty gulps, wringing his hands. “No, but—”

“But nothing,” he growls. “They’re fine. Don’t bother me again.” Bellamy rolls over, clenching his eyes shut tight. He can feel Monty lingering, feel him wanting to argue a little more, but eventually there’s the telltale sound of footsteps moving away. 

Bellamy lets out a harsh breath, and falls asleep.

****

He jerks awake to a shoe slamming into the side of his face. 

Bellamy sits bolt upright, his eyes wrenching open as he reaches beside him for a gun that isn’t there. His sister stands just inside his tent, arms crossed, foot tapping. The pale light shining through the canvas tells him it’s just after dawn. “What the fuck, O?”

“Get up.” She snatches his clothes off the floor and throws them at him. He narrowly manages to catch them before they hit him in the face. “Clarke is still missing, we’re putting together search teams.”

Bellamy groans, leaning back in the bed. “Who gave you the authority to do that?”

His other shoe glances off his nose. “What is your fucking problem, Bell? She’s been gone for more than twelve hours, get out of bed.”

Bellamy grumbles, pulling on his pants and underwear under the covers. “I don’t really think the princess is going to appreciate the whole camp barging in on her and Spacewalker.” Octavia makes a noise and he looks up, confused. “What?”

“You have got to be kidding me,” she huffs. “That’s why you refused to send anyone last night?”

Bellamy very much does not appreciate the tone, especially after the shitty sleep he’s gotten. He tugs his shirt on over his head. “She’s not my little sister, O. It’s not my job to cockblock her.”

Octavia scoffs, glaring at him. “It’s not your job to cockblock me either, but that is so beside the point. Clarke and Finn _and Myles_ went out together yesterday. The three of them.”

“Myles?” Bellamy’s stomach flips, his throat going dry. He can vaguely picture the kid, stocky and a little nerdy. Definitely not someone you bring along for a tryst. “And you’re sure he’s not—”

“No, Bell. He’s not back either.”

Oh, fuck. _Fuck_. 

That’s— bad. That’s really fucking bad. Because that means that Clarke has been missing all night _for real_ , and not off fucking Finn in some safe and sound bunker like he thought. That means Clarke could be dead, or injured, or held hostage and tortured like Murphy, all while he was busy— what? Having petty revenge sex?

_Fuck._

Bellamy swings his legs over the side of the bed, shoving his feet into his boots without tying them. He follows Octavia through the camp with hard eyes, weaving through the tents to the dropship, where a small group has gathered.

It’s all the people he would expect, all the ones who care about Clarke, all the ones most active in the camp, but— it’s so small. 

Bellamy learned his lesson with the hunt for Octavia, that sending everybody out was a bad idea, one that just got people killed, but it feels wrong somehow. Clarke is— as loathe as he is to admit it, Clarke is the most important member of the camp. Not just his co-leader, but also a planner, a strategist, a diplomat; not to mention their only healer.

He thinks of Clarke humming as she slit Atom’s throat, Clarke working to save Charlotte even knowing she’d killed her best friend, Clarke with blood on her hands after torturing the grounder, Clarke on that bridge trying to make peace, Clarke fighting to keep people alive even when she was too weak to stand.

Monty give him a nod as he joins the group, and Raven tosses him a walkie talkie. Bellamy catches it, exchanging a guilty look with the brunette. 

She looks at the ground, and he clears his throat. “Alright,” he says, tone clipped. “Tell me the plan.”

Monty nudges Harper, who launches into an explanation of where they’d last seen the missing hunters, of what quadrant they’d been going through. Bellamy nods along, arms crossed over his chest, struggling to keep his focus on the present.

His jaw clenches, mind drifting back again. He sees Clarke not two days on the ground and clinging to his arm, dangling over a pit of spikes. 

A martyr, Bellamy thinks with a flinch. She’s a martyr. 

And what do martyrs do? 

They die.

****

It’s nearly mid-morning by the time they find Myles.

He’s barely alive, regaining consciousness long enough to tell them Clarke and Finn were taken by grounders and nothing else. Bellamy has them bring him back to camp anyways, even though he has no idea what they’ll be able to do to help him without Clarke.

They start to walk back, to regroup, and decisions get harder from there. Logically, he knows the odds she’s alive, or Finn— they’re slim. And even if the grounders haven’t killed them, they don’t even know where the grounder village is, let alone how to get them out.

With Clarke gone, Bellamy is the only one left in charge, the one people look to. They’re on the verge of a war, with limited bullets and even more limited experience, and they don’t know when the grounders will strike next. The best thing— the safest thing —would be to cut their losses and call them dead.

His stomach turns, bile rising up his throat as he prepares to say the words, prepares to call off the search. Bellamy opens his mouth—

The radio crackles, Raven’s voice bubbling through from command central at the camp. “He’s back,” she says eagerly. “Finn’s back!”

The group pauses mid-step, letting out a collective sigh of relief. Bellamy urges them forward and raises the walkie to his mouth, lips curling into a grin. “And Clarke?”

The smile falls from his face as the silence drags on.

“I’m sorry,” Raven says eventually, and Bellamy’s heart drops.

_Fuck._

“Is she—” The words stick in his throat, the idea choking him. His hand tightens around the walkie-talkie. “How’d Finn get away?”

“They were going to kill him. Lincoln got him out.” Bellamy closes his eyes and tilts his chin, nodding silently. He lets a slow breath out through his nose, trying to quiet the riot occurring inside his chest.

“Good,” he chokes out stiffly, “That’s good.”

He feels like the trees are closing in on him, like he’s breathing in that acid fog. He wants to be happy for Raven but— if it had to be one of them, why Spacewalker? Why was he the one to come back?

“Clarke was still alive when they took him.” Raven’s voice is gentle, even through the static of the speaker. Too gentle. “It’s possible—”

Bellamy opens his eyes, pressing the talk button to cut her off. “Thanks,” he says, throat thick. He forces his feet to move, following behind the rest of the group. “We’ll be back in twenty.”

“Bellamy—” 

He turns the walkie off.

****

Bellamy hates Finn.

He really fucking hates him.

He hates his stupid hair, and his stupid voice, and his stupid gaping chest wound that reopened while he was out leaving Clarke for dead. 

He hates that Finn’s here, lying in his stupid bed in his stupid tent with his stupid too-good-for-him ex-girlfriend holding his hand, and Clarke is still missing. He hates the way Finn keeps trying to go after her like he didn’t leave her there in the first place.

He hates that he can’t go after her himself.

Bellamy doesn’t give a shit about Finn. He’s a judgmental two-timer who makes people do stupid shit, Clarke included. His dreamy ideals and starry-eyed politics have no place in this camp, no place on the ground. He doesn’t need Finn, he needs Clarke.

He _needs_ Clarke.

But there’s a reason Finn is here. A message he’s brought them. “Lincoln says the Commander’s sent scouts,” he tells them, his grating voice like a nails on a chalkboard. “He’ll be back when he has more information, but he thinks they’ll attack at dawn.”

So, no, Bellamy can’t go after her, because it would mean leaving this whole fucking camp of goddamn children leaderless during a possible siege. And, yes, he is extremely fucking angry because of it.

He storms around camp like a hurricane, nervous rage simmering hot in his belly. The kids know better than to approach him, letting him stalk back and forth between the Dropship and Raven’s tent uninterrupted.

He wishes Raven would leave the fucking tent so he wouldn’t have to see Finn’s simpering face to be able to talk weapons and ammunition with her, but that’s too much to ask.

Of course, when she finally does, no one tells him. It’s just after dinner when he throws open the tent flap with a growl and— Finn blinks at him from his sickbed, eyes narrowed. Alone.

Bellamy’s lips thin, and he turns to leave.

“You’re seriously just going to leave Clarke out there?” Finn’s tone is whiny and accusing and it wouldn’t be half as annoying if it wasn’t fair.

Bellamy faces the younger man, arms crossing over his chest. “I’m not the one who left her.”

“You probably don’t even want her to come back,” Finn sneers. “Sure would put you back on top again. And you didn’t even have to get rid of her yourself.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Bellamy growls lowly, his eyes dark with hatred.

Sure, he and Clarke have their differences, but they’re partners. She’s his….well, she’s _his_. Finn should keep his fucking mouth shut.

“Clarke would go looking if it were you or me,” he says. “She’d never abandon anyone like this.”

“You think I don’t want to go after her? You think I want to be stuck in this camp with your sorry ass, waiting to be told whether or not we’re going to get massacred in the morning? Fuck you,” Bellamy spits back, rage boiling over. “ _You’re_ the reason she was out there in the first place, _you’re_ the reason we didn’t go looking last night, _you’re_ the reason she’s—” 

Finn pushes up on his elbows, glaring back. “How is it _my_ fault you couldn’t be bothered to send a search party before dawn?”

Bellamy throws up his hands, huffing. “If she’d been with someone else, I would’ve known she was actually missing and not just off—” _Fucking you._ He bites off the rest of his sentence, hissing through his teeth. “Nevermind.”

He turns, pushing roughly through the tent flap into the dusk, ignoring the angry yells of the man behind him. 

Bellamy hates Finn.

****

As the evening winds into night, Bellamy gets antsy.

He’s waiting for Lincoln to come back and tell him it’s all clear, because if he says anything else—well, they’re all fucked. And once it’s all clear, he can send out a search party, or better yet, Bellamy himself can go out and look— No.

He can’t.

Finn’s words ring in his ears, settling over his own guilty conscience. Clarke is still out there. He _left_ her there. Every minute he stays in the walls of this camp is another minute the grounders could be torturing her, _killing_ her. But if it’s not all clear, and god knows with his luck it won’t be, leaving now could damn the whole camp.

Still, Bellamy gazes out into the dark, thinking maybe— No.

He knows he can’t, he knows he shouldn’t, he— _Fuck it._

With a growl, Bellamy snags his rifle, slinging it over his shoulder as he pushes through the gates. Fuck Finn, fuck the camp. He’s going after her.

He gets maybe ten yards before he sees her. 

Clarke’s hair, bright even in the dark of the moonlit forest, bobs like a beacon through the trees as she staggers towards him. Something in his chest leaps and shatters simultaneously, a cry leaving his lips as he lopes forward to catch her.

She collapses in his arms, weak and exhausted, and Bellamy sinks to his knees. He clutches her to his chest. “Hey,” he says softly, pushing the hair back from her face. Her face is bruised and bloodied, but her eyes are the same bright blue as always. “Clarke.”

“Bellamy?” She looks at him like he’s the answer, like he’s not the person who left her abandoned to the grounders overnight so he could have revenge sex. Who almost left her out there again, and for what? His heart beats hard and heavy beneath his ribs.

“Yeah,” he says, throat thick. “You’re home.”

She blinks at him once, twice; her lips curling upwards just enough— and goes limp.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part 2 is Clarkey baby waking up n finding out about what's been happening while she was away.
> 
> hopefully will have that to you this weekend but who knows.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Okay, fine, yes, I’m angry; is that what you want to hear? You shouldn’t have been on that hunting trip in the first place, you’re our only healer, not to mention my—my co-leader. And if you were going to insist on going you should’ve at least brought someone who could protect you, unlike Myles or fucking Spacewalker. Someone who actually knows how to use a gun, like—”
> 
> “Like you?” Clarke asks softly.
> 
> ****  
> I am stupid

Clarke wakes up in the dropship next to a dying kid.

After everything that’s happened since they came to the ground, maybe it shouldn’t be a surprise, but it still is.

She nearly leaps off of the table someone’s laid her out on, clutching at her ribs. Oh, right. She’s injured too.

It’s Myles, she sees. 

It seems the grounders who took Finn and her the day before hadn’t actually killed him on the spot, but they made a pretty good effort. There’s a wound in his side that has soaked through the fabric that’s been tied around it in an effort to stop the flow. No matter what else is messed up under there, if it keeps bleeding, he won’t last much longer. 

Clarke braces her unsteady body against the edge of the table, holding herself up with one hand while she uses the other to pull the dressing away. 

It’s actually— not that bad. Probably needs stitches, but there’s no major damage she can see, and if there had been any arteries severed the kid would be long dead by now. 

She hobbles towards the other table that holds her kit, dragging the tray of suturing supplies across the floor. Dumping moonshine on her hands, she plants her elbows on the table for support and gets to work.

Her hands are shaky as she makes the stitches, and her work ends up crooked and ugly, nothing like she was taught in the clinic on the Ark. It’s frustrating, but her head is swimming, and she’s too busy choking back vertigo to try and clean her stitches up. 

Clarke frowns as she hears the canvas flap open behind her, footsteps coming to an abrupt stop. Black spots start to hover at the edge of her vision.

“Clarke!”

Hands find her back and Clarke sinks into them, knees collapsing like rubber beneath her. The suture needle clatters to the table. 

“Fuck,” Bellamy swears, hiking her up is his arms. Clarke blinks up at him woozily, pressed against his chest. He looks angry, she thinks. Why does he always look so angry?

He sets her back down on the table she’d crawled off of in the first place, tugging a blanket roughly up over her legs. Clarke reaches out to touch his face and he freezes, startled eyes meeting hers. “Hi.”

“Hi,” he responds dumbly. Bellamy blinks at her for a second before shaking his head, the anger swirling back across his face like a storm. It’s sad, Clarke thinks. She doesn’t like it. “What the fuck were you doing, princess?”

She looks over his shoulder at Myles, whose breathing has fallen into a steady pace. “He was dying. What do you think I was doing?”

Bellamy follows her gaze over to the kid, his eyes finding the crooked row of sutures over the previously open wound. “Of course,” he grumbles. “Someone else could’ve done that for you, you know.”

Clarke’s head begins to clear, the dizziness settling into a steady ache. “Then why didn’t they?”

Bellamy shakes his head, lips pursed. “Clarke, you—”

She watches as the anger falls off his face and he takes a step back, cool indifference settling in instead. Bellamy clears his throat, shoving his hands into the pocket of his pilfered guard jacket.

“Hungry?” he asks. “Thirsty?”

“Yeah.”

Bellamy nods. “I’ll go get you something.”

He looks at her for a second longer, and Clarke thinks maybe he has something to say, maybe he’ll let himself tell her whatever it is that’s bothering him—

He shakes his head, and leaves.

****

Clarke starts to feel better as the day goes on. 

Bellamy sends Octavia in with breakfast instead of bothering to come back himself, and she eats the rations quickly, gulping down the fresh water. It’s been a full day since she’s had anything to eat or drink. 

She looks over Myles again, this time in a seated position. It’s a lot easier to check him over like this, when she’s not one foot into passing out. He’ll live, she decides, but they ought to get some more of that red seaweed just in case. She sets Jasper on nurse duty, telling him to keep someone with Myles at all times for the next day or so to look out for signs of infection or internal bleeding.

“What about you?” Octavia asks, and Clarke blinks.

Oh, right. 

“I’m fine,” Clarke assures the younger girl. Octavia looks her over doubtfully, eyes catching on the holes in her pants, the blood soaked into her sleeves. Clarke tries to stand and groans, the movement pulling at a cut on her stomach. “Well, probably.”

Octavia raises an arched eyebrow. “Have you checked?”

Clarke winces, holding her hand to her side. “Not technically.” To inventory her wounds, she’d have to take her clothes off. And as much as the dropship makes a good place for a med ward, it’s not exactly a place Clarke would feel comfortable getting naked in. “I’ll check in my tent when I clean up.”

She staggers over to the door of the dropship, pushing through the canvas and leaning against the threshold. It’s almost midday now, and the sun streams warmly through the trees, kids bustling through camp.

She can just barely see her tent, out by the gate on the far side of camp. It’s not so long a walk usually, but right now it seems like a marathon. She gets down to bottom of the ramp before she has to stop. 

Octavia appears beside her, looping an arm over her shoulders for support. Clarke huffs. “I’m—”

The other girl rolls her eyes. “Shut up, let me help you.”

They make a sharp right instead of going straight through camp, and Clarke looks at Octavia warily. “This is not the way to my tent.”

“I’m not she-hulk. Your tent is too far away.” Octavia pushes through the flap of a tent, helping Clarke through and lowering her onto the bed. 

“Octavia,” Clarke says, glancing around. “This is your brother’s tent.”

The brunette stands, flouncing over to the door. “I know that.” She leaves for a second, coming back in with a bucket of clean water and a cloth for Clarke to clean up with. “Here.”

She’s acting—weird, even for Octavia. Her social skills are not always the best, given that she spent a solid portion of her childhood literally hidden under the floor, but this is something else. Clarke looks at her suspiciously.

“Did you want to watch?”

Octavia huffs. “Fine, let me know if you need anything.”

Clarke watches as she exits the tent, leaving Clarke alone. She looks around herself, taking in the setup. 

She’s been in Bellamy’s tent before, obviously, but never by herself. It feels weird, like she’s intruding on his personal space, especially sitting on his bed. Unfortunately, the thought of standing up right now is just about her least favorite thing, so she stays put. 

She sighs, looking at the bucket. Presumably Bellamy knows she’s in there, so really what’s the harm?

Clarke kicks off her shoes. She peels off her pants first, wincing as the fabric sticks to her skin, pulling at the scabs. Before she can talk herself out of it, her shirt comes off too, leaving her in just her dingy Ark-issue bra and underwear.

She’s filthy, her skin covered in sweat and grime and blood. Dipping the scrap of cloth into the water, Clarke looks herself over, checking for wounds. She’ll want to clean the cuts first, before the water gets too dirty.

Each swipe of the cloth reveals more skin, pale under the coating of dirt. It feels good, to get clean, even if it is just a sponge bath. 

Once she’s finished wiping herself down for the most part she looks herself over, taking inventory of the injuries.

Her ankle is bruised and swollen from twisting it in the woods. There are abrasions around her eye and on her cheek from where the hit her, and a lump on the back of her head that thankfully didn’t bleed. With the amount head wounds bleed, she’d never get the blood out of her hair.There are scrapes and bruises on both arms, and a shallow cut that spans the width of her right thigh, the skin around it puffy and pink.

The cut on her stomach is the worst one, long and ragged. She’s not sure if it’ll need stitches, or even if she’ll be even able to effectively put stitches into the torn flesh. She hopes she won’t have to try.

She looks up as the tent flaps open. “Octavia, I thought I—”

Bellamy freezes, his eyes raking over her exposed flesh. Clarke fights the urge to shiver, covering herself with her arms.

“Bellamy.”

He stares for a moment more before blinking and clearing his throat, averting his eyes. “Sorry, I didn’t— why are you in here?”

Clarke flushes. So Octavia didn’t tell him after all. 

She wishes she was surprised. “I just needed a place to clean up, my tent was a little too far for me. Sorry, just give me a second to get dressed.”

Her cheeks burn in embarrassment. Clarke’s not incredibly shy with her body, but she definitely would have preferred Bellamy hadn’t seen—what he’d seen. It’s stupid, because why does she care what Bellamy thinks about her, but she wishes— well.

She tugs her pants on, flinching as they scrape at the tender flesh on her thigh. She picks up her shirt and hesitates, bracing herself.

The fabric is stiff and stale from sweat and blood, but she has nothing else. 

“Here,” Bellamy says gruffly, and she looks up. He’s standing much closer now, a grey shirt extended towards her while he looks steadfastly away. “It’s clean, or as clean as you’ll get around here.”

Clarke takes it, looking at the garment in confusion. Where had he—?

She decides it doesn’t matter, pulling the shirt on over her head. It swamps her, settling loosely over her shoulders. It’s clearly a man’s shirt, and she’s almost worried to ask. The only clothes they had were the ones they’d had one when they came down, so—

“Is this—?”

“It’s mine.” Bellamy says stiffly.

“Oh.” Clarke swallows hard, feeling the soft fabric between her fingers. “But—”

Bellamy rolls his eyes. “It _is_ mine, princess. I had it on over this one for the launch.”

That—wasn’t what she was going to say. 

She can smell him on the shirt. Not that it smells like sweat, or like it’s dirty, just— Bellamy. She’s not sure what she even means by that. It just smells like him.

And now so does she.

“Thanks,” she says, and Bellamy shrugs. 

He’s still not meeting her eyes, even now that she’s dressed. Maybe it’s just—she shouldn’t be in his bed. On his bed. Whatever.

Clarke moves to push herself to her feet and winces, a strangled noise leaving her throat. Bellamy lunges towards her, helping her back down onto the cot. “Don’t be stupid. How hurt are you?”

“Not very, really. I—” She can feel blood start to trickle out of the wound on her stomach and she quickly tugs up his shirt so it won’t get stained. “Fuck.”

Bellamy lets out a breath through his teeth. “What do you need? The suturing stuff?”

Clarke shakes her head, shoulder falling in resignation. She’s stuck here, it seems. “Just some clean cloth. And fresh water.” She looks at the bucket, biting her lip. “Maybe some moonshine.”

He nods, stalking out of the tent. 

Clarke waits, sitting there. It’s—awkward, to say the least. She’s pretty sure neither of them have pictured Clarke in his bed before, and under these circumstances—well.

She looks at the rumpled sheets and frowns. 

Okay, maybe not neither of them. But Bellamy certainly hasn’t, and it’s not like Clarke was being serious when she thought about it, it was just—something to think about.

Like that time she’d walked in and he had two girls in there at once. It wasn’t like she—she hadn’t wanted _Bellamy_. She wasn’t jealous of the girls, she was jealous of him, for being with the girls. So she’d thought about it, a little bit, maybe. And if Bellamy ended up being the one in the bed with her in the fantasy, that was just because she was bad at imagining things. 

It was _his_ bed, she reasoned. It made sense for him to be there.

And now she’s in his bed for real, bleeding on his stuff, so it’s a moot point anyways. 

Broad shoulders push through the tent flap, and Bellamy looks at her with his dark eyes. “I brought it.”

He sets the bucket next to her, handing her the cloth and the moonshine. Clarke unscrews the lid of the flask and wets the cloth in moonshine, dabbing at the cut. 

_Fuck_.

She lets out a gasp, her hand flying away from the wound. She knew it would burn, but—

“What wrong?” Bellamy’s voice is harsh and loud, kneeling in front of her. 

Clarke shakes her head. “It just— it hurt more than I thought. It’s fine.”

She steels her self, bringing the cloth back over the wound. Closing her eyes, she hold her hand out, fingers shaking slightly— she hisses through her teeth, elbow dropping. She just—she can’t make herself do it.

Frustrated tears build up behind her eyes.

“Hey,” Bellamy says gently. 

Clarke opens her eyes, looking at him. His face is uncharacteristically soft, a look she’s never seen on him before. “I just—”

He puts his hand over hers. “Do you want me to try?”

She nods at him, mouth slightly agape. “Yes, please.” He takes the cloth from her and she tenses, holding the shirt away from the wound. “I might— I’ll try not to move, but—”

Bellamy’s other hand settles over her hip bone, holding her down. “I’ve got you.”

It’s— weirdly intimate. 

Clarke looks away as she nods, unable to meet his eyes. She’s blushing, she thinks, and she hopes he thinks it’s from pain and not—

It’s just weird, having his hand on her bare stomach. In his bed. 

Even given the circumstances.

She bites her lip and takes a swig of moonshine, wiping her mouth before handing the flask back to him. Clarke lays back on the bed. “Go ahead.”

He pours it over the wound first. 

It burns, really fucking burns, and Clarke yelps like a kicked dog, her hips bucking against his hold. Her hands fly up, one grabbing onto his shoulder for purchase, the other fisting in the sheets. Bellamy keeps her steady, murmuring apologies as he cleans the wound with the cloth.

She’s shaking when it’s over, her lip raw from biting down on it. She keeps her eyes closed for a minute, drawing harsh breaths in through her nose as her heartbeat steadies. Slowly she become aware of Bellamy’s hand, stroking soothingly down her flank.

“I’m fine,” she says, and his hand stops. She opens her eyes, sitting up. “Thanks.”  Clarke grabs for the extra cloth, making a makeshift bandage from it and wrapping it around her torso. 

“You should stay here.” S he looks up and meets his eyes, her expression disbelieving. Bellamy looks away, ruffling his hair with one hand. “If you couldn’t get across camp an hour ago, I doubt you can now. It just makes more sense.”

Clarke frowns. “And you?”

Bellamy shrugs, his throat ticking. “Less of a commute with you here. We can reassess at the end of the day.”

_Huh._

Despite all the reasons she shouldn’t, Clarke agrees.

****

The situation with the grounders fizzles to an anticlimax. 

“The army Lincoln warned Finn about is sidetracked for at least a week” Octavia tells her, flopped back next to Clarke across her brother’s bed. Clarke wishes she could be half as relaxed. “Apparently there’s some shit going down with the Ice Nation.”

It’s good news, lucky news, but Clarke just feels like everything’s been set on hold. A few more days to plan, maybe, but she’s still stuck in Bellamy’s tent, unable to walk or even stand for any prolonged period. Despite everything, it seems like their odds just keep getting worse.

“How’s Finn, anyways?” Clarke asks.

She’s surprised it took her this long.

She thought, before Raven came down, that her thing with Finn was— she doesn’t know. Special. Close to love, if not there.

And even though the arrival of his very beautiful, very alive girlfriend threw things violently into perspective, she still felt—bad. She told Raven she didn’t know him, and it was true, is true, but—she had wanted to. 

She thought they killed him, and so she stopped thinking about him forcefully so as to not lose her shit, but when she got back and Finn was alive—hmm.

“Still laid up in his tent,” Octavia says with a shrug. “Can’t get up because of the whole—” The younger girl gestures vaguely over her own abdomen. “—hole.”

Clarke jerks upright. “Wait, what?”

“Yeah, I mean, he tore his stitches. I offered to try to fix them for him but he—Hey, what are you doing?”

What Clarke is doing is attempting to get to her feet, not particularly gracefully. “I can’t just leave him with a gaping wound.”

Octavia looks at her with narrowed eyes. “Why not? Hey—” she grabs onto the back of Clarke’s shirt, holding her back. “Okay, Clarke, just— Just wait a second, okay?”

Clarke huffs but sits backs down.

Octavia gives her an assessing look. “Are you sure? I really think I could do it.”

Clarke’s lips press together. “You can watch, and next time you can do it.”

The other girl stares at her for a moment more before clapping once, springing to her feet. “I’ll take it. C’mon, I’ll help you up.”

****

It’s awkward.

It’s really, _really_ fucking awkward.

For one thing, Clarke has Octavia staring over her shoulder, watching her every move with big owl eyes and asking inane questions every two seconds. And beside that, she’s got Raven over the other shoulder watching silently while Finn fixes Clarke with a longing stare like he needs to tell her something. Which he doesn’t.

Or maybe he does, but Clarke doesn’t want to hear it from him. Not now, and maybe not ever. But especially not now.

Even if Raven has broken up with him, it’s still rude. It’s been, what? Two and a half days?

So she ignores all of them.

And then, of course, there has to be one more thing, because the situation wasn’t painful enough. 

Bellamy pushes through the tent flap behind her.

She knows it’s him without looking, because, at this point, who else would it be? Plus she recognizes his footsteps, and the breeze blows his scent towards her, intensifying the eau de Bellamy she’s been surrounded by all day.

“What are you doing in here?” he growls, and Clarke also knows that his arms are crossed over his chest, because of course they are.

“I’m showing your sister how to suture,” she says primly, as if that’s all that’s going on in this circle of hell.

“I checked my tent and you were gone.” Clarke winces, eyes flicking up at Finn who is now looking at her even more intensely. “Since I _know_ you can’t walk on your own, I was a little concerned.” 

She can tell his words are now directed more at Octavia than herself, but she answers him anyway. “Finn ripped his stitches.” She finishes tying off the last one and turns, meeting his eyes. “Which you _knew_ , and should’ve told me, so I could fix it.”

“If you were hurt, I—”

“He could’ve waited—”

Bellamy and Finn both start at the same time, then glare at each other.

It would almost be funny, Clarke thinks, except that it so very much isn’t. She glances over at Raven, who looks pale and slightly nauseous, her lips in a tight line. “Anyways, it’s done.” She uses Octavia’s shoulder to push herself up, suppressing a wince at the pain in her ankle, the pull of skin on her stomach. It’s easier than it had been that morning, but still hurts. “So I’ll just be going.”

Finn frowns. “If you can’t walk, maybe you should just stay—” 

Clarke would rather be back in the grounder camp, she thinks, but she doesn’t have time to say that. She doesn’t have a chance. 

Bellamy sweeps her bodily into his arms, stalking out of the tent without another word. 

“Fucker,” he says under his breath. 

“Agreed.” Clarke sighs, squirming in his arms. She looks around, trying to figure out where exactly he’s taking her, because her tent is fully in the other direction. “You can put me down now.”

He gives her a look and keeps walking, pushing through the canvas flap of his own tent and depositing her back onto his bed. Clarke looks around, her eyes narrowed. “Why you’d bring me back here?”

Bellamy rolls his eyes, leaning against his desk with his arms crossed, because his arms are always crossed these days. “Clarke, you shouldn’t have been out of bed in the first place. Finn was fine, he could’ve waited until you were feeling better.”

“No,” Clarke shakes her head. “I mean, why did you bring me back _here_ , and not to my own tent?”

Bellamy freezes, mouth opening and closing like a fish. “I—” His throat ticks, a pink flush warming his cheeks. It looks— nice. Clarke likes it, on Bellamy. It makes him seem more open, more real. “It was closer.”

It wasn’t, Clarke thinks, but she’s too tired to mention it. “Fine.”

****

It _is_ nice, actually.

He spends the rest of the day mostly at his desk, making plans and organizing and giving instructions to an unending revolving door of kids. Clarke helps from the bed, throwing in whatever she thinks will work better, or questioning him when he starts to have wild ideas about how good at aiming they can count on the kids being.

It actually—works. And works well. 

Normally they don’t get along that well for that long, but today—maybe there’s something softer about him, or maybe it’s just that Clarke spent the last day getting the shit kicked out of her, but they work.

The swelling in Clarke’s ankle goes down while she rests, apparently preferring being non-weight bearing compared to being run on through the woods like she did the night before, and by dinner time she thinks she could probably go back to her tent on her own.

Bellamy shakes his head when she mentions it.

“Don’t worry about it,” he says, not meeting her eyes. “Tomorrow night, you can go back.”

That sounds like—Clarke is certainly going to worry about it. “Then where would you sleep? My ankle will be just as fine in my tent. Even if you don’t want me to walk on it, you could just—”

“ _No_ , okay?” Bellamy’s tone is hard, and it freezes her. Clarke’s eyebrows furrow. He lets out a sigh, shoulders sinking. “Sorry, it’s just—you’re still hurt. If anything happens overnight, if the grounders come, you wouldn’t be able to run. And I—” He stops, meeting her eyes. “Just no, okay?”

Clarke finds herself agreeing.

It gets a bit awkward, though, when it’s actually time for bed. Her shoes are off, pants kicked off under the covers so she’s just in his shirt and her underwear. “Are you sure you don’t want—”

“I’m fine,” Bellamy insists from his spot on the floor. “Go to sleep, princess.”

She lays on her back for a while, staring up at the canvas of the tent. Eventually Bellamy sighs, rolling to look at her. 

“Why aren’t you mad at me?”

Clarke blinks back, startled. “What?” He gives her a look, as if she should know what he’s talking about, but she—doesn’t. “For making me stay here?”

“No,” he says, voice short. “For leaving you out there.”

Clarke’s eyebrows pull together in confusion. “What are you talking about? We were taken, what could you have done?”

Bellamy groans, throwing one arm over his eyes. “I don’t know— we could’ve looked.”

“You did look. Or did Finn tell you where to find Myles?”

“No, but—” He seems frustrated in a way she can’t understand, like he wants her to be angry. Why does he want her to be angry? Things today have been so— good. “We could’ve looked earlier.” His voice goes quiet, and she almost doesn’t catch the next part. “ _You_ would’ve looked earlier.”

Clarke shakes her head. “It was dark, staying put was the smart thing.”

“And not coming after you once we knew where you were?”

She keeps her voice even, placating. “That was the smart thing too.”

Bellamy doesn’t look pleased with her answers at all, blinking at her in disbelief. He mumbles something under his breath and turns away, so Clarke is left staring at his back in the dim light.

“Why are you mad at me?”

He sighs. “I’m not— just go to sleep, princess.”

“You are though,” Clarke insists. “You have been since— since I woke up. I thought— today we were so good together, like nothing was wrong, but it’s still there isn’t it? You’re still angry.”

Bellamy rolls roughly back towards her with an exasperated breath.

“Okay, fine, yes, I’m angry; is that what you want to hear? You shouldn’t have been on that hunting trip in the first place, you’re our only healer, not to mention my—my co-leader. And if you were going to insist on going you should’ve at least brought someone who could protect you, unlike Myles or fucking Spacewalker. Someone who actually knows how to use a gun, like—”

“Like you?” Clarke asks softly.

“For example, yeah!” He’s huffing audibly in anger and Clarke waits for a moment, giving him a second to calm down. “Or— you should’ve told me, at least.”

“Told you what? You knew I was going out on the hunting trip.”

“You should’ve told me Myles was going with you. You should’ve told me you were planning on coming back, so I’d know you were—” Bellamy lets out a deep breath. “It doesn’t matter.”

Clarke is—she’s even more confused than she had been. “Why wouldn’t I have been planning on coming back? Did you really think I’d just leave, after everything?”

He shakes his head. “No, I just thought— you’ve stayed out at night before without telling me.”

She’s— oh. 

_Oh._

He means with Finn. He means the time she stayed out with Finn, the night she spent in the bunker with him.

“I wouldn’t do that now,” Clarke says quietly. “I— that won’t happen again. Finn, I mean. He and Raven—”

“It’s none of my business,” Bellamy says, his tone flat.

“Okay,” she agrees, but it’s still tense. Clarke rolls away from him, closing her eyes.

There’s a long silence, the air heavy in the tent. She knows he’s not trying to sleep, and she knows he knows she’s not either. 

“I’m sorry,” he says eventually. “I should’ve gone looking earlier.” 

“It was already dark,” Clarke says again, shaking her head. “Staying in was the smart thing.”

“Maybe,” Bellamy agrees. His next words are soft, almost too quiet for her to hear. “But I should’ve gone anyways.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the author is a dumb bitch who is incapable of writing succinctly so there will be a part 3
> 
> it will be sexy
> 
> it is already halfway written but I will try to finish it soon.
> 
> lemme know our thoughts so far


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clarke doesn’t know why she’s so surprised. It makes sense, if she thinks about it. Forces herself to think about it. Bellamy is, after all, probably the best looking man in camp, not to mention the easiest to get into bed if you’re a beautiful woman. Which by all degrees, Raven is. And Raven and Finn are done, so it makes sense that the other woman might be looking… elsewhere.
> 
> Still, though. Something about it makes Clarke uneasy. It just feels—wrong.
> 
> She’s not _jealous_ , she’s just—
> 
> She’s not jealous.  
> ****  
> the end

The tension breaks in the night, and by morning there’s only a hint of lingering awkwardness between them. 

Clarke is grateful, eager to get back to the smooth relationship they’d had the day before.

She checks the cut on her stomach in the morning, and it looks good. The wound has scabbed and the skin isn’t pulling anymore, so it’s unlikely to reopen unless she really wrenches it. Her ankle feels better too, blood starting to pool ugly and purple on the side of her foot.

“It’s a good thing,” she tells Bellamy, who’s looking somewhat ashen at the sight. “It means it’s healing.”

“It’s gross,” Octavia replies gleefully. Clarke slaps her hand away as she tries to poke at it. “Does it still hurt?”

Clarke shrugs. “Some. I should still stay off it as much as I can.” She glances over at Bellamy before turning back to his sister. “How are our patients?”

Octavia launches into a long and painfully detailed explanation of every aspect of Myles and Finn’s respective injuries and how they’re looking. She’s a little overexcited, Clarke thinks, but she’ll make a good medic some day. God knows they need another one. 

From her report, it seems like the two will do fine without Clarke’s attention for the day. She’s grateful, especially that she won’t have to see Finn again. Now that she can nominally walk on her own, she might end up alone with him, and she—she doesn’t want that.

So what’s the harm in pretending a little bit?

“I should probably stay put,” Clarke says, eyeing Bellamy from the bed. He’s at his desk, focused on something in front of him. “And least for a little while longer.”

He looks up and meets her eyes, something hot burning there. Bellamy nods approvingly. “Good.”

Octavia looks suspiciously between the two of them. “What is going on here?”

Clarke blinks and looks away, willing her cheeks not to redden. Bellamy glares at his sister. “Knock it off, O.” 

Octavia opens her mouth like she’s going to say something but Bellamy fixes her with a look that Clarke doesn’t quite understand, and his sister closes her mouth. “Fine,” she says, rolling her eyes. Octavia stands up, brushing off the knees of her pants. “I’ll bring your breakfast, Clarke.”

“What about me?” Bellamy huffs. 

Octavia sneers at him as she saunters out of the tent. “Get it yourself, big brother.”

Clarke lets out a small laugh, covering her mouth when Bellamy’s eyes shoot over to her. “Sorry, it’s just—” she snorts. “She must’ve been a handful.”

Bellamy groans, his shoulders softening. “You have no idea.”

He looks— he just looks so tired, like life has been one long trek, and yet there’s still that same love and adoration. Clarke is sure that no matter how hard it was for him growing up, taking care of his secret sister, that Bellamy wouldn’t change it for the world.

“What was it like?” Clarke asks gently. “I know you told me about—” She doesn’t finish her sentence, but they both know she’s talking about what he said after Dax, after their day at the bunker and the hallucinations it brought. After he almost left. “But there’s gotta be more than that.”

“There is,” Bellamy agrees. “It was—hard. But also somehow easy. I was six when she was born, but that was still young enough that after a while it just seemed like it was the way it had always been.” He continues for awhile, and Clarke listens with a fond smile.

“Is that why you’re so good with the kids?” Bellamy raises an eyebrow and she blushes. 

Okay, so the ‘kids’ in question are, for the most part, pretty much the same age as she is. But they just seem— younger, somehow. Or Clarke feels older. “You know what I mean.”

Bellamy’s lips curl upwards a little and he shrugs. “I don’t know, maybe. But maybe I just get them, get what they’ve been through. Most of the kids down here didn’t grow up on Alpha like you and—” _Wells_ , Clarke’s heart cries, but Bellamy doesn’t say it, his voice cutting off. “Like you. It’s a different experience, even if you don’t have a sister hiding under the floor.”

Clarke chews it over. She knows she grew up privileged, knows that was part of the conflict she had with him and the others at the beginning, but she’s never quite realized that Bellamy would’ve had it in the same way as the other delinquents. She’s never thought about him as a kid at all.

“I’m lucky you’re here, then,” she says, and he blinks at her, surprised. “What? You know we’re in this together. I’m not—I didn’t want to be the leader, much as it may have seemed otherwise.” 

Bellamy snorts. “Princess, I hate to say it, but there’s no world in which you don’t end up leading.”

Clarke rolls her eyes, crossing her arms over her chest with a huff. “If that’s true, then there’s no world where you don’t end up at my side.” 

Bellamy gives her a strange look and Clarke rolls the words over in her head. _Oh._

Oops.

“Anyway,” she says quickly, sitting up straight. Or as straight as one can sit up in a bed on the floor. She has to preserve at least a semblance of dignity. “What’s on the docket for today?”

He looks at her for a second longer before clearing his throat, turning his gaze back to the plans scattered across his desk. “We should send someone to check the bunker again, make sure we got everything. If there are any more guns, any more bullets—”

Clarke nods. “It can’t hurt. Who were you thinking?”

They fall easily into the work, the ideas and plans flowing effortlessly between the two just as they had the day before. So it wasn’t a fluke, Clarke thinks with some surprise. They really do just _work_.

She feels better today about the impending confrontation with the grounders. Nothing has necessarily changed in the past 24 hours, but knowing they have time, knowing they’re safe, at least for now—it helps, now that the adrenaline overload of her escape has faded. 

Jasper and Miller come back from the bunker sometime before dinner with a new load of guns and gunpowder, hefting them like trophies, giant grins on their faces. Clarke and Bellamy breathe twin sighs of relief, then instantly go into attack mode, figuring out where and how to allocate the new resources. The end of the day comes faster than she expects, light fading from the tent even as they keep working, and soon it’s completely dark except for the lantern on the table, firelight dancing across the outer wall of the tent.

Clarke fails to stifle a yawn, sinking against the bed in the dark corner of the tent. “We should call it a day.”

Bellamy looks over at her, eyebrows furrowed, then back to the papers in front of him.

“You should stay again,” he says, and Clarke looks back at him in surprise.

“I really don’t have to,” she insists. “I probably could’ve been walking around today.”

“But you weren’t.”

Clarke doesn’t really have a good explanation for that, and her cheeks flush. She’s not about to explain to him that she was avoiding taking care of her ex— her ex- _something_. Finn.

Plus, medically speaking, it was better for her to stay off the ankle as long as possible, so it’s not like she was lying entirely. Just stretching the truth a bit.

“No,” Clarke agrees eventually. “I wasn’t.”

Bellamy gives her a long look, something heavy with a sort of intensity she’s come to expect from him, but one she still can’t begin to explain. “Just one more night, princess.”

Clarke sucks in a shallow breath, unable to break his stare. He blinks first and she follows, looking down. “Okay,” she agrees. “But just one more.”

Bellamy smirks like he’s won something, which in a way she supposes he has. “You act like you’re the one being put out here,” he teases. “It’s my bed I’m sacrificing to the cause.”

Clarke rolls her eyes, the air in the tent suddenly lighter. “You could always join me.”

It’s a joke, but Bellamy goes still. Clarke’s heart beats faster, and she bites her lip, waiting for his response. 

“No,” Bellamy says, voice low and steady. “I really don’t think I could.”

****

Clarke insists on actually getting up the next morning. 

The heat when she wakes in Bellamy’s tent is stifling, and her clothes stick to her, damp with sweat. She was having a dream before she woke up, something that made her heart race, made her skin warm, but it wasn’t from fear. 

She looks over at Bellamy, still asleep on the hard ground, and blushes. 

No, definitely not fear.

Octavia is awake already when she pushes through the tent flap, and she insists on accompanying Clarke to the waterfall to clean off. 

“Bell would be annoyed if I let you go alone,” Octavia says, and Clarke blushes further, thinking about her dream as she stands naked in the cool water. 

She washes herself and then her clothes, setting them out to dry on a rock in the sun as she relaxes under the waterfall, letting the pounding spray dislodge the dirt and blood from her hair. It feels good, even better than the fake wash she did right after getting back. 

She puts her underwear and bra back on when she’s done and lets Octavia examine her cuts, explaining the stages of healing and what to look for while her pants and Bellamy’s grey shirt dry off a little longer. The shirt doesn’t smell like him anymore when she puts it back on, and she’s not sure whether or not that’s a good thing.

“Oh,” Octavia says as Clarke pulls the garment over her head. “I should’ve brought your shirt back. I washed it yesterday.”

Clarke feels something in her stomach clench unhappily. “That’s okay. I’m sure Bellamy can wait another day.”

They head back together, after Clarke is done getting dressed. Breakfast is ready, and she grabs a plate before heading over to the dropship to check on Myles. Once she’s there she gets stuck, an unending list of kids filing in with a backlog of injuries from the three days she was out of commission. She doesn’t get a chance to rest for a long time.

Her tent feels unfamiliar, when she finally gets back to it.

Everything is the same, obviously. She isn’t sharing with anyone, her tent small and lonely on the outskirts of camp. It doesn’t have the same set up as Bellamy’s: no furniture of any kind, just a makeshift bed on the ground and a roughly sewn pack made of parachute fabric from the landing that holds her very few possessions. 

It’s almost sad, looking at it. There’s nothing to show it’s hers, nothing of Clarke in it at all. It’s just somewhere to sleep. 

Which is fine, of course. There’s no reason she needs anything more. The dropship is her workspace, she can’t very well see patients in her own tent. Still, though, she misses the warm familiarity of Bellamy’s tent, the easy way people came and went, the way the bed is big enough for two, even three if she remembers correctly. 

She does remember correctly. She wishes she could stop.

It’s weird; how much she’s thinking about Bellamy.

She hasn’t really considered how much he’s come to mean to her recently. Not even just in the past few days, although that’s obviously a major contributor, but in all their time on the ground. Even when they were still at odds, he was there and he was necessary. 

But it’s not just that he’s a necessity now, is it? She likes him, likes spending time with him. They’re friends, really actually friends. 

It shouldn’t make her uncomfortable, the way that sentiment settles in her stomach. 

Friends. It doesn’t seem like a strong enough word.

And then there’s this new awareness she can’t shake, the one of Bellamy not as a platonic co-leader, but as a partner, a real partner. Her passing fantasies before had been just that: passing. But this feeling she’s had for the past few days, since he scooped her up in his arms and carried her back into the camp: it’s lingering.

It feels eerily close to how she’d felt about Finn, in those few days where it seemed like that was leading somewhere. Clarke wishes she could shake it.

Then again, maybe she doesn’t.

It’s a good feeling, more comfortable, more right that it had been with Finn. Bellamy and her don’t hide things from each other, they don’t try and make it nice, make it pretty. 

Or at least, that’s what she thinks.

It becomes obvious that that’s not quite the case, later that day. Clarke leaves her tent quickly, choosing to spend her time in the more public zones of the camp. She’s not necessarily _avoiding_ Bellamy’s tent, where he stays sequestered, but she doesn’t want to overwhelm him with her presence after the last few days.

Eventually though, he finds her. 

“How’s the ankle?” he asks, dropping down next to her on a bench beside the fire. His thigh brushes against hers as he sits, and Clarke fights not to twitch at the warmth that suffuses through her leg.

“Fine,” she replies with a shrug. “Probably could use a brace, but it’s not like we have the supplies.”

“You could ask Raven,” Bellamy suggests. “She could probably rig something up.”

Clarke winces at the idea. Things between her and Raven are strained, still awkward. She’s not quite sure why it is; Raven must know by now that Clarke and Finn aren’t getting together. Still, she’s sure it hurts. 

The weird thing is though, it doesn’t look so much like she’s _mad_ at Clarke, or even sad. She looks—guilty, somehow. Clarke still can’t figure it out. 

“Yeah, maybe.” Her tone is noncommittal, matching her expression. Bellamy looks at her with furrowed eyebrows, and Clarke recognizes something familiar in the way he’s looking at her. 

He’s guilty too. 

But about what? Maybe the same things, the things they’d talked about her first night back. But she thought they’d moved past that the day before. This is something else, she thinks, or at least a different facet of the old thing.

He clears his throat. “How are you and Raven anyways?” Bellamy waves his hand, not meeting her eyes. “You know— with the whole Finn thing.”

“Weird,” Clarke admits. “I’ve been giving her space.”

“That makes sense,” Bellamy says, his voice oddly thick. He blinks and shakes his head. “Anyways, are you busy right now? We should go over the final lists for bullet allocations. I think it makes sense to give higher rations to the kids who had the chance to practice.”

Clarke nods. “Sure, yeah.”

Bellamy stands, brushing off his pants and holding out a hand to help her up. Clarke looks at it for just a second before taking it, letting him pull her up to standing. He jerks his chin at his tent. 

Does he— does he want her to come back with him? 

Maybe he misses it too, the easy dynamic they’ve shared the last few days. Maybe she should rustle up a chair, so they can both sit at his desk, and then they can just have that space as their home-base, even if Clarke isn’t sleeping there. Or maybe she _should_ sleep there, even. It might make sense, just to have both of them in the same place if they’re needed. She could drag her mattress in, there’s probably enough space. And if there isn’t, maybe—

“I’ve got the list on my desk.”

_Oh_.

Right.

Clarke bites her lip, suppressing a groan. “Of course,” she says, gesturing at him to go ahead. “Let’s go then.”

****

It doesn’t seem like he _doesn’t_ want her there, once they’ve gotten inside. 

She has missed a lot, avoiding him all day, even if she was in the med-bay for a good portion of the time; and it seems like he’s been making a list of things to go over once they got the chance. 

They take dinner in his tent, heads leaned over the table, marking off lines on crudely drawn maps of the camp and its surrounding areas where they might want to put land mines, if that’s what they decide to do. 

Octavia comes in at some point, dropping her butt unceremoniously next to Clarke on the crate she dragged in to serve as a second chair. Bellamy and Clarke exchange an amused look. “Do you need something?”

Octavia considers the question. “Not particularly, no. I was just wondering when we could work on more medic training. I’m bored, and the new meat hut stinks.”

Bellamy rolls his eyes. “It’s a job, O, you can’t expect us to just let you pick and choose—”

“It’s fine,” Clarke assures him. She looks over at Octavia. “We can go over my injuries again, see how they’re doing. And after that why don’t you go check on Myles and Finn, and report back?”

The younger girl perks up considerably. “And tomorrow?”

Clarke sighs. “Tomorrow you can meet me in the dropship and we’ll see if anyone needs sutures.” 

Bellamy raises an eyebrow at Clarke, looking amused and doubtful, and she gives him a slight shrug, turning around and unlacing her boot so Octavia can get at her ankle. 

“What do you notice?”

Octavia lifts her foot gently, feeling the hot skin of her bruised ankle. Clarke tries not to flinch. “It’s more swollen than it was yesterday. Shouldn’t it be the opposite?”

Bellamy’s eyes flash over at Clarke, waiting for a response. 

It’s stupid, Clarke thinks. He’s being too dramatic about her damn ankle. It’s not like it’s broken, sprains happen all the time. So what if she’s not being super good about taking care of it?

“It’s because I’ve been walking on it,” Clarke admits, not meeting Bellamy’s eyes. “Or not elevating it, more likely. Gravity brings the fluids down, so it swells. It’s not a huge deal.”

Octavia frowns. “How do you stop it from happening?”

Clarke shrugs. “Restrict range of motion, graduated compression. And keep it propped up when you can, like when I’m sitting.”

“You should ask Raven to make her a brace,” Bellamy suggests to his sister, and Clarke glares at him. _Traitor_. “Clarke doesn’t want to.”

Octavia snorts. “I wouldn’t want to either. Talk about an awkward situation.”

“It’s not _that_ bad,” Clarke argues, but secretly she agrees. “But if your brother wants her to make the brace that badly he can ask her himself, seeing as how he’s the only one she won’t immediately kick out of her tent.”

“That depends,” Octavia says with a laugh. “Maybe Bell’s fucked his way out of her good graces. ”

It takes Clarke a second to understand, the words roaring in her ears.

At first she thinks maybe Octavia’s talking about her, about Clarke and Bellamy, but there’s no reason she should think Clarke had slept with Bellamy. She knows full well her brother was on the floor both nights.

Her second thought is one of the other camp girls, but she knows Raven doesn’t care about the teenage drama, so why would she care who Bellamy was sleeping with?

“Well, big brother?” Octavia continues, oblivious to the chaos she’s leaving in her wake. “Did you at least kiss Raven goodnight afterwards?”

_Raven_.

Octavia is talking about Raven. Raven and Bellamy. _Together_.

Sleeping together. Being together?

_There’s no_ — No.

Clarke swallows down a lump in her throat, her stomach flipping uncomfortably. She waits for Bellamy to contradict Octavia, to tell her she’s being ridiculous, but he says nothing. He looks at Octavia like he wants to kill her, but his sister just keeps talking, as if she hasn’t just dropped a nuclear bomb. 

Clarke doesn’t know why she’s so surprised. It makes sense, if she thinks about it. Forces herself to think about it. 

Bellamy is, after all, probably the best looking man in camp, not to mention the easiest to get into bed if you’re a beautiful woman. Which by all degrees, Raven is. And Raven and Finn are done, so it makes sense that the other woman might be looking… elsewhere.

Still, though.

Something about it makes Clarke uneasy. It just feels—wrong. 

She’s not _jealous_ , she’s just—

She’s not jealous.

When Octavia finally leaves it’s an elephant in the room, and Clarke doesn’t bother holding back on bringing it up. Raven is their weapons expert, her relationship with Bellamy is important for Clarke to know about for strategic purposes. 

It _is_.

“So,” Clarke says casually. “You and Raven?”

Bellamy shrugs, expression hard. “It just happened.”

Clarke frowns. “Right.” She manages to stay quiet for—well not as long as she wanted to, but the words bubble to the surface anyways. “And is it like—a thing?”

Bellamy raises one eyebrow. “A thing?”

“You know,” Clarke says, waving her hand. “Do you think it will keep happening?”

“I don’t know,” Bellamy replies suspiciously, his eyes narrowing. “Why?”

“I don’t know.” Clarke keeps her tone lofty, like it’s all no big deal, but inside of her, something ugly is writhing. “I just don’t think it would be a good idea. You know you have a bit of a— reputation around camp. With the girls, at least. It doesn’t seem like it would end well.”

She’s being mean, probably. She’s just being mean, but she can’t stop, and she’s not sure why. 

“So that’s why you didn’t come after me, isn’t it?” Clarke asks, trailing her fingers along the edge of the table. “Too busy fucking Raven to look?”

Bellamy sucks in a breath harsh enough that Clarke looks at him fully. His expression is tortured, angry, and she realizes she’s gone too far. She shouldn’t have started in the first place, really, but this—she’s actually hurt him. 

“Bellamy—” she starts, stepping toward him. “I didn’t mean— I don’t actually think—”

“Yes.” His voice is rough, and Clarke’s eyebrows pull together. “Is that what you wanted to hear? Yes.”

_Oh._

“Oh.” It’s not—why is she so unhappy? It’s not like—she knows he didn’t mean anything by it. She knows from their conversation the night before that he feels bad about it, but it— it hurts. 

He lets out an unhappy laugh. “See? I told you you should be angry with me.”

Clarke tries to detangle her hurt from his logic. “It’s not— you didn’t do it knowing I was captured.”

She knows it’s the truth, no matter how stoic he keeps his face. His guilt might keep him from seeing the obvious, that it was nothing but an unfortunate accident, but Clarke knows better. He can put this weight on his shoulders, but it doesn’t belong there. 

“How do you know?”

She looks at him hard, until his facade breaks. “I know you, Bellamy.”

“Yeah,” he says quietly. “I suppose you do.”

Clarke— she likes that. 

She doesn’t love his resignation, the disappointed way he said the words, but— she likes knowing him. Clarke takes a step towards him, her hand extending out—

Octavia sticks her head in the tent. “Clarke? How can you tell if a stitch is infected?”

Her hand falls and she lets out a deep breath, turning towards the tent opening. “Myles?”

Octavia shakes her head and Clarke suppresses a groan. “Finn.”

_For the love of—_ She looks over at Bellamy, who’s steadfastly avoiding her eyes. Clarke’s shoulders sag. “Alright, just— give me a second.”

Octavia nods, and Clarke can hear her footsteps drift away. 

“I need to go,” she tells Bellamy. “But—”

“It’s fine, princess,” he says tightly, shrugging. “I’ll see you later.”

It doesn’t sound fine. Clarke bites her lip, hesitating.

“Bellamy—”

He meets her eyes, crossing his arms over his chest. “Just go. Spacewalker is probably waiting.”

There’s nothing left to argue. She leaves.

****

Finn is, of course, being fucking insufferable.

Raven’s not there anymore, which is both better and worse.

Better, because Clarke is still reeling a little over her and Bellamy, and seeing Raven really wouldn’t help with that; but worse in that her absence emboldens Finn. 

“Clarke, I need to talk to you.”

Clarke refuses to meet his eyes, staring down instead at the stitch he’s pulled open again somehow, despite being stuck in bed for the past few days. “You don’t,” she says, then turns to Octavia. “See here how the skin is even along the edge of the wound? There’s no major swelling, no discoloration or discharge. It’s not infected, he’s just not being compliant with the treatment plan.”

“Clarke, please—” Finn says, and she bites down hard on her lip, muscles tensing.

“We already did this Finn. I have nothing to say to you, and even if I did, Octavia doesn’t want to hear it.”

Octavia perks up a little, looking between the two of them. “Oh, I really don’t mind.”

Clarke gives the other girl a look, pinching her leg where Finn can’t see it.

Finn fixes his puppy-dog eyes on Clarke. “Look, I know I fucked up, but it’s over now with Raven. Clarke, I love—”

Clarke stands up rapidly, brushing her knees off. The fast movement hurts a bit, but she refuses to listen to him a minute longer. “Octavia, I think you can finish this up. I have to go.”

“Oh, cool!” she hears Octavia say as she limps out of the tent.

She starts back towards Bellamy’s tent before she can think better of it. Sure, they’d decided she didn’t have to stay there once she could walk on her own, and with the way they’d left things, it might not be the most welcoming place, but—she wants to be there. 

He’s sitting at the desk when she walks in. 

“Hey.”

Bellamy looks up, confused. “Hey, I thought you were—”

Clarke waves a hand, rolling her eyes. “He’s fine. I just— Octavia needs to practice her sutures.”

There’s a loud yelp that echos through the camp from the general direction of Finn’s tent, and Clarke winces.

Bellamy laughs. “Jesus, princess, what did he say?”

“The usual.” Clarke shrugs, but she can feel a flush paint her cheeks. 

It’s so much—easier now. The air seems thinner, like the heaviness of the last conversation escaped in the few minutes she was gone, and she’s grateful for it. 

“I don’t understand what you ever saw in the kid,” Bellamy says. “He doesn’t exactly seem like— your type.”

Clarke raises one eyebrow, shooting him a look. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

He shrugs lazily. “Too soft, I guess. I don’t think he could handle you.”

There’s a new sense of tension starting to build, but it’s not the same as before. It’s not angry, not angsty—Clarke thinks it would best be termed flirtatious. 

It’s intoxicating.

She leans on the desk beside him, resting her weight back on one hand. “Maybe I like soft.”

Bellamy sits back in his chair, his eyes glittering. “I don’t think you do.”

“Oh yeah?” Clarke asks. Her voice is dangerously quiet, sharp like a knife and just as sweet. “What do I like then?”

“You like power, even if you don’t want to admit it. You want a partner, an equal. Someone who can match you. Someone who knows you.”

His eyes flick over her body, grazing over his shirt on her skin, on the line of her throat, before settling on her face.

“Someone who will stand by your side while you make the decisions no one else wants to. Someone who will fight you when you’re wrong, because even _you_ can’t always be right. Someone who will carry you when you need to be carried, who lets you walk on your own when you don’t.”

Clarke hums, dragging her finger along the edge of the table. “Where would I find someone like that?”

“Don’t know,” Bellamy says, his voice so deep in rumbles through his chest. “Let me know when you start looking.”

He grins at her as he stands, pushing his chair into the desk. 

The Raven thing is there, still, somehow. It floats around Clarke’s head like an annoying pest, leaving ugly bites. She can insist she’s not jealous all she wants, but the knowledge that someone else was there, someone else who she knows Bellamy values, and not just for their abilities in his bed: it makes her a little feral. 

It’s not even about when it happened, or why. As she told him earlier, he didn’t know she was really missing, not when he was doing it. But it’s the fact that it happened at all that leaves something gnawing a hole in Clarke’s belly. 

She normally wouldn’t dare to start something with Bellamy, not when their working relationship is at stake, but knowing he’s already done it: it leaves the door open. 

If he’ll take Raven into his bed, why not Clarke? 

He says she’s looking for a partner, for an equal; what about him? Maybe that’s what they both want. 

Maybe that’s what they both _need_.

“And if I was—?” Clarke asks, pushing herself upright. “Looking?”

Bellamy raises an eyebrow, crossing his arms over his chest.

She continues: “I’ve been thinking, the last couple days. About how well we’ve been working together.” Clarke can feel the heat coming off him, and she longs to feel it against her skin. “I think you know me. Match me.”

The minute she says it she knows it’s true. He knows her just as well as she knows him. It was bound to happen.

“Clarke,” Bellamy warns, and it spurs her on. 

There’s something there, something new. She thinks they’ve been lurching to it all day, maybe ever since they got to the ground. The tension between them— common sense dictated that it was always going to snap, someway, somehow. She just didn’t expect it to be like this.

Finn was a detour, a distraction, but she can see now what’s really there. What’s really important. She and Bellamy— everything they do, they do together. She needs him, and he needs her, even if neither of them are likely to admit it out loud. She can pretend all she wants that her feelings towards her co-leader are just begrudging respect, but that’s not true, hasn’t been true for a long time now.

She likes him: as a person, as a partner, and— as this. As what this could be.

“I just—” Clarke hesitates, stepping closer into his space. Bellamy looks like he is holding his breath, but he doesn’t move away. “This has been good, don’t you think?”

“Princess—” His voice is low and dark, and it sends shivers down Clarke’s spine. “What are you doing?”

Clarke feels— hot, emboldened by his tone, by his eyes on hers, by the way he’s leaning in towards her. She pulls her shirt over her head, dropping it to the table beside them. “Whatever the hell I want?”

It’s stupid, and she sounds a little petulant, but she thinks it works. Bellamy sucks in a deep breath, eyes flicking over her bare chest. 

“Fuck,” he murmurs. His tongue darts out, wetting his lips. “Wanna put my hands on you.”

Clarke’s heart races. She steps closer, taking his hands and placing them on her skin: one on the bare skin of her hip, the other high on her ribs, grazing the band of her bra. She loops her arms around his neck, eyelashes fluttering. 

_Fuck_.

When it had been a fantasy it had all seemed so—safe. Fun. 

But this— there’s an intensity she didn’t expect, one she should’ve foreseen because it’s Bellamy. Everything he does is intense. Even just the look he’s giving her—heat pools low in her abdomen.

It’s going to be— a lot. Clarke can tell that already.

She tilts her chin up, her fingers sliding into his hair. It’s soft, so soft, but she’d already known it would be. She tugs his head a little and he leans down, lips nearly brushing her own. 

“I don’t think you know what you’re getting yourself into, princess.” 

His voice is a growl, eyes glittering darkly. He’s so beautiful, so— so much. And he’s— he’s _right_.

She has no idea what she’s getting herself into, not at all, but that doesn’t mean she’s not interested in learning. Learning with his lips on hers, with his hands on her skin, with his teeth on her throat. But it would be learning, there’s no way around that.

For all her bluster, Clarke has only been with one man. 

And she was only with him one time. 

“I’ve—” She bites her lip, looking up at Bellamy with wide eyes. “I’ve only ever been with Finn.”

She feels the change immediately, Bellamy stiffening under her hands. He hisses through his teeth, gently extricating himself from her embrace. “No,” he says, shaking his head. “I’m not doing this again.”

Clarke’s cheeks flare red. “Sorry, I—”

God, it’s so fucking embarrassing. Why did she say that? It’s _Bellamy_ , the camp king of hookups and one-night-stands. Why would he be interested in a girl with no experience?

She takes a big step back, snagging her shirt—his shirt— off the table. Bellamy groans, an arm flung over his eyes. “Clarke, wait—”

She doesn’t.

****

Clarke feels—weird.

Weird is probably the best way to put it at least. Why she is so torn up about her co-leader refusing to fuck her, she’s not entirely sure; but it was just— it was humiliating. Something about Bellamy has always made her—self conscious, at least a little. She’s pretty good at hiding it, all things considered, but Bellamy’s just— he’s _old_.

Not _old_ old, she knows there’s only a few years between them. But at the beginning he talked down to her like she knew nothing about real life, both because of her age and her social strata, and part of Clarke sort of agreed with him.

She thought when they became co-leaders that feeling stopped but— this is a new low.

She doesn’t understand why it hurts so bad, anyways. It’s not like she’s in love with him, he’s just— Bellamy. He’s Bellamy, and he’s everything, somehow. 

Why she’s talking about it with his sister, though—Clarke has no excuse for that.

“I’m just embarrassed,” she insists to Octavia. “Right?”

Octavia looks up from the chunk of deer meat she’s attempting to practice her sutures on. “How the hell am I supposed to know?”

Clarke shrugs uselessly. “I don’t know, you know him?” 

“Yeah, but—” Octavia scrunches up her nose. “He’s my brother. And you’re—you.” 

“Oh.” Clarke looks down at her hands, something in her stomach sinking. “Right then.”

Of course she misinterpreted. It makes sense. She’s not Bellamy’s type, and besides that, she’s not—she was overthinking what he said, is all. She thought he meant more than he did. He was probably just—being nice. Even if he did want to put his hands all over her.

Octavia groans. “No, I didn’t mean— ugh, you all are so stupid, honestly. Look, he probably just feels bad about Raven.”

That—what?

Clarke’s forehead wrinkles. “Like—guilty? Are they—they’re not together, I don’t think. Why would it matter if—”

The younger girl shakes her head. “No, not bad like guilty, bad like _bad_. Like _bad_ bad.”

Well, that doesn’t help her at all. Clarke wonders if Octavia is being purposefully obtuse, but decides poor communication skills are probably just a Blake family trait. “What?”

“You know,” Octavia says vaguely, waving her hand. “Because you both were trying to use him to get over Finn.”

Clarke’s mouth drops open.

“We were both—what?”

“I’m not mad,” Octavia insists, which is good, but also— _what?_ “I mean it’s gross because, you know—Bell, but I get why you’d both pick him. He’s not horrible looking, and Finn hates his guts so—”

“That’s not what I was doing,” Clarke says. “Is that what he thought I was doing?”

Octavia shrugs noncommittally.

“Fuck.”

****

She’s not really sure how to approach him about it.

How does a girl go about telling her former rival, current co-leader, that she has actual feelings for him? That when she’d tried to fuck him, it had been about _him_ , and not anybody else?

And is it even a good idea to try?

Clarke’s always been one to stay the course, to choose practicality over something as changeable as wants. But this seems different, seems deeper in a way she can’t quite place, like she’s on the precipice of something she can’t even begin to recognize.

She and Bellamy—it’s not a short term thing. Not the way they work together, not the way they fit like pieces of a well oiled machine. As different as they are, they complement each other perfectly, as leaders, as people, as friends.

She wonders how else they might fit, given the right circumstances.

The night before was—not a mistake, but a miscalculation. She was forcing it, leaping to the natural conclusion without letting the story catch up with her. Clarke doesn’t know how to avoid doing that again.

Not now that she knows that he wants her. Not now that she knows what his hands feel like on her skin.

Now she wants more, faster.

And it’s not just that, not just the sex, and that’s the bigger problem.

The other problem is that he’s avoiding her. Clarke’s lack of a plan doesn’t stop her from seeking him out, but she can’t seem to find him. It’s irritating to say the least.

The camp isn’t a huge place, so she’s not even sure how he’s doing it. He’s not in the dropship, not by the fire, not in his tent. She wonders bitterly about checking his girls’ tents, but decides against it, the wrenching feeling in her stomach making her angry and nauseous. 

Clarke doesn’t think he would do that, but if he did, she sure as hell doesn’t want to see it.

She finally manages to corner him after dinner, falling into step alongside him as he sneaks from the gate back to his tent. “Where have you been all day?”

His jaw is clenched, and he gives her a stiff shrug. “Scouting.”

“Scouting,” Clarke says doubtfully. “Outside the walls?”

He shrugs again and she gets a little angry. They may not be under imminent attack but it’s still not safe outside the camp. If he’s going to hide from her, he shouldn’t be risking his safety to do it. 

Bellamy comes to a stop in front of his tent, turning to face her. 

“What do you need, Clarke?” His tone is flat, and she bristles.

“To talk to you.” Clarke draws her spine up straight, chin jutting out. “I think you owe me that much.”

His eyes narrow. “If you want an apology—”

She shakes her head. “I don’t.” Clarke reaches her hand out, laying it on his forearm. Her voice softens. “Just let me say a few things, okay?”

Bellamy looks at her for a long moment before swinging the tent flap open, gesturing at her to enter. She ducks under his arm, her body brushing against his as she moves past him.

“So?”

Clarke looks down, resisting the urge to fidget. She didn’t quite realize she’d have to go first, and she doesn’t have a speech prepared although she now wishes she did. “About last night—”

Bellamy groans, scrubbing a hand over his face. “Just let it go, okay? It was a mistake, you don’t have to tell me.”

Clarke glares at him. “That’s not what I would call it.”

“Well, maybe you should. It’s fine. It’s not going to happen again.”

“Why not?” She tilts her head. “Because of Raven?”

“Yes—no— I don’t know! I get it, it’s like you said, I have a reputation. But I’m not—” Bellamy sighs, his expression closing off. “Just find someone else to work off your frustrations with.”

“Is that what you want?” Clarke asks. “Even if—even if you’re the one I’d choose?”

She’s saying this wrong, she knows. She’s making it seem like—like this is all she wants. Sex, she means. But it’s more than that. She hopes he can tell it’s more than that.

Bellamy shrugs, his lips pressed tightly together. “I don’t know what you want me to say, princess.”

“You keep calling me that,” Clarke notes, stepping closer. “At first it was an insult, but now—” She tilts her head, her eyes speculative. “It doesn’t seem like that’s the case, is it?”

His throat ticks as he swallows. “I don’t know what you mean.”

Bellamy looks…nervous. Which is good, Clarke thinks. She can work with nervous better than she can his normal cocky facade. Nervous means there’s something there.

Clarke is nervous too.

“Do you like it?” she asks. “Calling me princess?”

“Do you like being called princess?” Bellamy shoots back. His eyes meet hers, dark and almost angry, but that’s okay too.

“Yes,” Clarke admits, and Bellamy’s eyes widen a little. “At least—” She puts his hand on his arm, the move deliberately slow. “—I like it when it’s you saying it.”

“Not Finn?” His voice is low and Clarke shakes her head.

“Not Finn.”

Bellamy stares at her for a long moment, his gaze intense. Clarke feels like she’s holding her breath, and maybe she is, just waiting for him to make a move. Waiting for him to show her he feels it too. He wants it too.

He lets out a little noise, a huff of air through his nose, and then his hands are on her, tugging her body into his chest. Clarke lets herself go, lets herself be pulled into his current. There’s no fighting it, not now. Not that she would want to.

His fingers tangle into her hair, thumbs wrapping around her jaw and tilting her face up, so his eyes can blaze into hers. His mouth is so close, and Clarke can’t help looking, can’t help the way her tongue darts out and wets her lips, wanting.

“Tell me you want this,” Bellamy says, his tone demanding.

“I want this,” Clarke promises. “I want _you_.”

“Fuck,” he swears, and then his mouth is on hers, lips crushing together in a bruising kiss. It’s not like before, not tender or soft, but it’s what she expected from him. The heat, the intensity— it’s all Bellamy.

Clarke gasps into his mouth, her hands looping around his neck to pull him closer. His body is hard against hers, the solid plane of his chest pressed flush against her breasts. She can feel the way his cock starts to harden in his pants, stirring against her belly.

He’s so big, she thinks. It’s overwhelming.

It’s perfect.

His hands slip under the hem of her borrowed shirt, skimming over her sides. Clarke shudders, skin prickling wherever his fingers trace. She wants more, wants everything.

“Take it off,” he says, and she complies frantically, whipping the shirt over her head and tossing it away. Bellamy’s eyes gleam as he looks at her, her chest heaving under his gaze. “Couldn’t stop thinking about these,” he lilts, fingers gliding over the curve of her breast. “So fucking pretty.”

His mouth finds the skin of her chest, licking his way down her sternum to where the cups of her bra meet between her tits. He slips a hand behind her back, fingers flicking open the clasp of her bra, and guides it off her shoulders.

Bellamy looks her over for a moment, admiring the heavy slope of her tits, before closing his mouth around a nipple. Clarke moans, her hands sliding into his hair.

It wasn’t like this, with Finn.

Finn had known what he was doing, in a way. But it wasn’t the same way that Bellamy knows, and Clarke can tell the difference immediately. Where Finn’s touches were soft, careful, Bellamy touches her like he’s desperate, like he knows she is too. 

There’s no tentative exploration, no respectful hesitation. He knows what to take and how he’ll take it, and he knows she’ll like it just as much as he will.

It’s dirty, and Clarke loves it.

He was right, they do match. But not in the way she was expecting. They are perfect complements, her light to his dark, her soft curves to his hard planes. They mirror each other, fitting like two halves of the same whole.

His hands find the button of her pants, undoing it and pushing them down off her hips while his mouth tastes her skin. She shivers as he kisses down her belly, kneeling between her legs to help her out of her shoes. Bellamy stands as she steps out of her pants, leaving her naked save for her worn panties. 

He stands back and looks at her, his eyes hungry. He’s still fully dressed, so tall and put together while she pants in front of him. Her hair is wild around her face, mussed from his hands, her cheeks red, lips wet and swollen. 

She must look like a mess, but he looks at her like he’s starving. 

“I knew you’d be like this,” he says, and the words are so dark Clarke feels them rumbling through her.

“Like what?”

Bellamy stalks closer, taking her face in his hands, tilting it up so she meets his eyes. “Perfect.”

She wants to scoff, to tell him he’s exaggerating, but then his lips are on hers again, his hands sliding under her ass to hike her up against his body. Clarke wraps her legs around his waist, arms clinging to his neck as he carries her over to his bed, dropping her onto the cot and climbing over her.

“Why did you do it?” Clarke asks, gasping as his lips trace her collarbone. “Raven, I mean.”

He groans, nipping at her shoulder. “Do we have to do this now? She was fucked up over you and Finn. I was just there.”

Clarke tugs on his hair, unsatisfied. “And?”

“And I was jealous.” Bellamy pulls back, looking at her with dark eyes. “Wanted to make you jealous too.”

Clarke stares back, her cheeks turning pink. “You did.”

A grin curls across his lips, something catlike and overtly pleased. “Yeah?”

She rolls her eyes, squirming beneath him. “Yeah. Now can you touch me, please?”

“Bossy,” Bellamy mutters; but his hands are all over her again, tracing her curves, wandering down her belly. Clarke’s hips jerk as he slides down between her legs, pressing a kiss to the waistband of her panties. “Can I take these off?”

She nods frantically, lifting her hips and wriggling out of them. Her eagerness eclipses her shyness for only a moment, and as soon as she’s bare beneath him she feels like she should close her legs, cover herself so he can’t see. But Bellamy knows that, expects that, and he holds her thighs apart as he stares down at her glistening center.

“Wanna taste you.” 

Clarke shudders, jerking her head in a tight nod. Bellamy’s eyes gleam for a moment before he dives in, licking a line through her swollen folds. His fingers pet at her cunt lips, dipping down to find her entrance and circling it slowly. Clarke bites back a moan as his tongue lands on her clit, a thick finger nudging inside her wet cunt.

It feels— she was right, last time. It’s overwhelming, intoxicating. 

Her cunt spasms around his fingers, hips bucking upwards as she seeks more: more friction, more pressure, more fullness. More Bellamy. 

He growls, one arm sliding around her thighs to band across her hips, pinning her down in a way that is all too familiar, the same way he’d held her down as he cleaned her wound. She reacts almost the same way: gasping, hands clawing out for something to keep her grounded. His shoulders are too far away this time, tucked between her legs as he is, and so she fists one hand in the sheets, the other coming up to cover her mouth.

Bellamy nips at the soft skin of her inner thigh. “Good girl,” he growls, fucking her on his fingers. “One day I wanna hear you, hear all your sweet noises. When we’re not surrounded by all these fucking kids.”

Clarke nods, barking out a laugh behind her fingers that slips into a moan as his lips surround her clit again. She bites into the skin of her hand to keep from crying out, her back arching in pleasure.

He’s good at this. Almost too good at this. 

Clarke now understands the hordes of camp girls who were ready and willing to fall into his bed, even knowing full well that it would be nothing more than sex. Sex with Bellamy is—it’s a fucking dream.

She’s only slept with one boy, but she’s no stranger to oral, giving or receiving. It’s been a while, and her other partners had been women, but— nothing compares to this. Nobody has been able to work her up so quickly, so completely. Bellamy knows what he’s doing, playing her body like an instrument with his tongue, with his fingers, with his teeth.

It’s so much, too much.

He slides another finger inside the grasping clutch of her cunt, and she feel the delicious stretch as her muscles accommodate him, wet walls parting just enough so he can pump his digits in and out, a mimicry of sex. 

“So fucking tight,” Bellamy murmurs, and the words vibrate through her clit. It feels like he’s touching her everywhere, all at once. Clarke’s head drops back, mouth opening in a silent gasp as she falls off the edge.

Bellamy lets out a harsh growl, stroking her sides while her pussy clamps down around his fingers.

Clarke’s chest heaves, and she stays still for a moment, catching her breath through the end of her orgasm. When she can breathe again she slips her hands into Bellamy’s hair, tugging him up her body so she can press her lips to his.

His chin is wet, lips smeared with her arousal, and she tastes herself on him. In another situation she might be nervous, might be self conscious, but here, now, she groans, licking her taste off his lips. Her hands slide to his shoulders, hitting fabric, and Clarke opens her eyes with a frown. 

“You’re still dressed.”

Bellamy huffs out a laugh, tucking his face beneath her chin. “I am.”

Clarke pushes him back till he sits up. Bellamy watches in amusement as she clambers over him, tugging desperately at his shirt. “Take it off.”

He obliges, lifting his arms to help her guide the offending garment over his head. Clarke’s fingers spend a moment tracing the lines of his chest, the divots of his abs, but then she’s kneeling between his legs, undoing the button of his pants. 

“Slow down,” Bellamy jokes, stroking over her hair, but Clarke just glares at him.

“I’m naked,” she says, illogically annoyed. “You made me come. And you’re still wearing your shoes.”

He unties them and kicks them off, looking at her expectantly. “Happy?”

“Bellamy—” Clarke whines, looking at him with flushed cheeks. She wants him, now. She wants him to take his fucking clothes off, to stop playing around.

He looks at her with soft eyes, cupping her cheek and pressing a sweet kiss to her lips that leaves her blood boiling. “Okay.”

She watches Bellamy kick his pants off, pushing his boxers down with them. Clarke’s throat goes dry as his cock bobs free, thick and long and hard. Big.

She licks her lips and he laughs darkly. 

So big.

Bellamy pushes her back down, caging her in with his arms as he leans over her. “Is this what you wanted?”

“Yes,” Clarke gasps. “Yes.” Bellamy grinds down between her legs, his cock slipping against her wet cunt. She looks down, seeing the length of it sitting on her belly, and swears.

“What’s wrong?” Bellamy asks, pressing kisses to the sensitive skin behind her ear. Clarke sighs, her fingers sliding into his hair, grabbing at the soft curls.

She huffs out a laugh. “You’re going to be so annoying if I say it.”

He pulls back. His eyes are worried, looking down at her. “Say what?”

Clarke tugs him forward, kissing him gently. “You’re not gonna fit.” She feels his lips curve against her own and groans. “Shut up.”

“It’ll fit, princess,” Bellamy promises, his eyes glittering. “You’ll like it.”

She doesn’t doubt it. He kisses her with renewed vigor, cock grinding into her center. The pressure on her clit is euphoric, and Clarke tugs at his hair, pussy clenching around nothing. “Please,” she begs, “Now.”

Bellamy slips his hand back between her legs. She moans as two of his fingers dip inside her, scissoring apart. “Gotta get you ready.”

Clarke rolls her eyes, pushing at his shoulders while he chuckles into her tits. Her huff is cut off by a gasp as he slides a third finger inside her alongside the other two, pumping them steadily. It’s a tight fit, but she’s grateful for it a minute later when the blunt head of his cock presses against her entrance.

“Fuck,” she breathes. Bellamy’s eyes are hot on her, watching her face intensely as his cock spreads her open, walls parting to make room for him inside of her. He sinks into her cunt torturously slowly, his control ironclad, but Clarke wants to see him break.

She tilts her pelvis, canting her hips so he slides even deeper. It’s a stretch, taking him, but she bites her lip and takes it. Bellamy groans as he bottoms out inside her, the head of his cock snug right up against her cervix.

Clarke is panting already, even before it’s even really begun. Bellamy props himself up to look at her, brushing the hair out of her face with a soft expression. “Hey.”

Clarke blinks at him. “Hi.”

“You okay?” She nods and he smiles, dropping a gentle kiss onto her lips. “Good.”

And then he’s fucking her, pulling out almost all the way and plunging back in. It’s fast and it’s rough and it’s perfect. Each thrust jars her bones, sending jolts of pleasure sparking behind her eyes. He keeps his hip low, their abdomens pressed right up on top of each other, and each time he moves, his pubic bone grinds against her clit. 

Clarke was worried she’d compare him to Finn, but this: there’s no comparison. It doesn’t even feel like the same act. It’s like comparing apples to oranges, they just aren’t equitable. Sex with Bellamy is— it’s everything.

God, he’s so beautiful. 

Clarke’s hands fly up, grappling to grab onto him, but he catches them with a laugh, linking their fingers together and pressing her hands down into the sheets beside her head. He kisses her lips, swallowing the moans his cock drags from her so she can’t alert the whole camp to just what their co-leaders are getting up to, and beyond the scarlet haze in her mind, Clarke is grateful.

“So fucking good,” he murmurs into her hair, sucking bruises into her throat that she knows she’s going to be annoyed about later. “Fuck, princess.”

Clarke cants her hips to meet each of his thrusts, feeling his full length as it slides heavy inside her, splitting her open in the best way. He was right, of course. She does like it.

She likes the way it feels like ruin, the way she knows she’ll be able to feel him once he’s gone. She likes the way he whispers sweet things against her neck, the way his fingers tighten around hers when she clamps down around his cock.

She likes the way their bodies fit together, his much larger one covering hers, each inch of her skin hidden underneath him. She likes the way he looks at her, like he can’t quite believe she’s there, like he never plans to let her go. 

Fuck, it’s good. 

It’s so, _so_ good.

He lets go of one of her hands so he can press his fingers to her clit, rubbing against her until she’s ready to break apart again. And she does, stifling her cry into the hot skin of his chest. 

Bellamy groans low and her cunt spasms around him, rippling with the waves of her orgasm. His thrusts speed up, slamming into her harder, faster, his rhythm coming undone as he does, and when he comes, it’s pressed inside her to the hilt. Clarke pants into his shoulder, clutching his head to her neck as he spills hot inside her. 

“Fuck,” he says as he pulls out. It stings a little, and Clarke flinches as he flops to the bed beside her. He catches her expression, looking at her with concerned eyes. “You okay?”

Bellamy’s hand finds hers, fingers dancing along her palm. Clarke bites her lip and nods. “Good.”

She’s unsure now, about how to act. They never—they didn’t actually decide anything, just fell into bed. Bellamy sleeps with a lot of girls, maybe it doesn’t mean anything to him. Maybe it’s just—

He sighs and leans back, resting his head on one arm tucked behind his neck. “Tell me what you’re thinking, princess.”

“I’m—” Her words cut off as his fingers find the edge of her jaw, tucking a curl behind her ear. She flushes. “I should go back to my tent.” 

Bellamy frowns, his hand freezing. “Oh?”

Clarke’s heart races in her chest. She’s not sure—she can’t tell what he wants. What he expects. It scares her. “Unless—I could stay.”

He shrugs, but his eyes are intense. “Do you want to stay?”

“Do you want me to stay?”

He looks at her for a little too long, long enough that Clarke is afraid she’s made a mistake, afraid she’s misinterpreted. But then his thumb strokes her cheek, and he nods. “Yes.”

Clarke lets out a breath and settles into his chest, feeling the heavy rise and fall of his breathing. His heart beats loud under her ear. 

“Clarke,” Bellamy asks, his fingers carding through her hair. She looks up at him, chin resting on his sternum. “What is this?”

His voice is uncharacteristically vulnerable, and it makes her smile. “I don’t know,” she admits.“But— it’s something?”

“Yeah,” he agrees. The night is peaceful, air in the tent cool and crisp on their hot skin. Bellamy sighs, his lips curving up to match hers. “It’s something.”

And it is.

It _is_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GOODNIGHT
> 
> please let me know your thots n feelings. maybe throw me a kudo if you feel so obliged.

**Author's Note:**

> (as always, this was written for The t100 Writers for BLM Initiative, find our carrd here: [t100fic-for-blm.carrd.co](https://t100fic-for-blm.carrd.co))


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